


Night visiting

by sshysmm



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Folk Music, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 13:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16430564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sshysmm/pseuds/sshysmm
Summary: Sophia has a late night visitor. He swears he will never go on another expedition.





	Night visiting

“It’s a little warmer this evening, Miss Sophia.”

The sound of the brush dragging through her hair was like the cracking of the fire. The maid’s strong grip pulled its teeth down again and again, relentlessly separating golden strands until Sophia’s scalp tingled with the static charge.

It had been a day of sparse conversation, and she did not feel inclined to add to it now. The maid was right though: the day was warmer, and its heat was seeping into the house, so that with the fire and the repetitive lullaby of the brush Sophia felt her eyelids droop.

Through her room’s thick curtains the stubborn refrains of a street singer could still be heard. He had been out there warbling all day, so that his coarse laments had accompanied Sophia’s every anguished twist of her handkerchief, every sigh uttered as Lady Jane set down her book, every time either woman set her sewing aside to remember that there had been no news still. No news and no activity, no visitors and no post. It had been a long, late winter’s day that had seen the snow on the ground begin to sweat sullenly, mingling with mud and straw. The ice released the smells of the city that had been contained for months, and London reeked as it stood on the threshold of spring. How anyone could stand to fill their lungs with such air, enough to sing and sing and sing, Sophia could not begin to imagine.

“Thank you, Effie,” she managed to murmur as the maid tutted and stepped back, sweeping the glittering strands of shed hair from the front of her apron and into the camouflage of the fire.

“Miss,” Effie took her leave without further effort at niceties.

She could not bring herself to feel much guilt for the lack of conversation as Sophia remained at her toilette, her fingers twirling patterns in the coils of a silver chain laid out before the mirror. The locket at its end lay open, and a face she had not seen for years gazed away into her room with the far-eyed certainty of an explorer.

Another winter gone, and soon Lady Jane would turn her ceaseless energy once more to raising funds, cajoling men, and reminding all the editors in London that this was the year they would certainly hear from her John that the Passage had been found and traversed. Sophia’s stamina would have to rise to meet Lady Jane’s, and the days would fill with the words of well-intentioned friends, the calculations of learned men and travellers and the discussions of provisions and passages that so sustained Lady Jane. Sophia would feel like she was being spun round on an endless purgatorial wheel, forever waiting, forever wishing she could have given another answer to the man in her locket. After all, Lady Jane asserted that when you were married to someone you knew in your heart and soul that they were still well, and you could be certain of their safe return.

Sophia stroked the portrait with her thumb, preparing to snap its glittering case shut and go to her bed. As she touched the edges of the silver oval a sound made her pause though: a footstep on the boards outside her room that was heavier than any woman’s step. She sat up and faced the door through which Effie had just left and saw a shadow at its foot.

“Hello?”

The handle moved a little in its socket as someone put a gentle pressure on it, and Sophia wondered that she was not more afraid. She swept her loose hair over her shoulder and clutched her woollen shawl tight across her chest, the room’s warmth forgotten — but she felt no compunction to cry out or to flee from the person at the door.

Slowly the handle turned, under the grip of someone unfamiliar with its long rotation. The door gave way silently and a gust of chill air entered the room, preceding the long stride of a booted leg, and then another. Captain Francis Crozier broached the threshold of her room, at once bold as brass and as sorry as a man could look, immaculate in his uniform. Patched, a little rumpled, but all the more handsome in her eyes, for it made him all the more the Francis that she knew and loved.

He was just as she remembered him. His hands he could not keep still without knotting his fingers behind his back, and he stooped a little to make himself seem less tall. His head was bare and his hair neatly combed, and his smile was all adoring apology. He eyes met hers and then dropped to the floor to hide the passion that filled them.

As he never had in parlour or hall or theatre box before, he now took a step nearer to her and let the door close behind him. He brought his gaze back up to her, allowing the sincerity of his feeling to reach Sophia where she sat astonished in her night gown.

“This cannot be...” she remained seated, dumbfounded, unable to find further arguments as Francis lunged to his knee before her, catching her arms with ice-cold fingers.

“Sophia. I am returned to you. I am returned.”

“How are you here? Where is Sir John?” she should put on her gown and go down to welcome her uncle! Surely her uncle had not allowed Francis to sneak away to her on his first night back beneath his own roof?

Francis’s grin curved in that way that always caused her heart to leap, his hands slowly enticed her arms to unfurl, and he took her hands in his. “Lady Jane is with him. They have their own matters to catch up on. I am here for you only. My Sophia.”

He lowered his head to her lap, pressing her fingers with his lips, kissing the palms of her hands and the pads of her thumbs. Having covered her skin with softly murmured things she could not hear over her own suddenly hammering heartbeat, he buried his face then against her open hands. She was acutely aware of the fact then that her hands lay against her thighs, which were covered only by the thin cotton of her night gown.

“Francis, you cannot be here,” she gasped, but her thumbs rose to the sides of his face, smoothing the short, coarse hairs of his sideburns, tracing round the hot edges of his ears. “I said I would hear no more proposals until you were finished with exploration. And then you disappeared! For years. And you have returned with no warning at all — do you not know how I have worried and despaired for you? Could you not have sent word from Canada, from port, from the other side of London?”

“Forgive me,” he begged her hands. “I am finished with exploration, Sophia. I will never go to sea again. I would fill every drawer in your house with my possessions had I enough.”

Like the softening snow outside, the frozen feeling in her chest relaxed, and the worry in her frown melted to compassion. Sophia bent over her lover, curving her body around his form to rest her cheek against the well worn felt of his blue coat. “Thank you for coming back.”

He shuffled closer to her, his hands sliding up her legs and around her hips to her sides. She had never been touched like this, with so little between the flesh of her body and his confident hands. Francis turned his face against the thin cotton in her lap, breathing in the smell of her as his hands tightened possessively.

“I cannot stay long,” his voice came out low with sadness though still hoarse with want. Dimly, Sophia knew that these words should trouble her. He was back now, what could he possibly mean? But she could not think through the moment to find out why she should be worried. Instead she let him move his chest between her legs, his face raised to hers.

She lowered her lips to his open mouth and he kept his eyes open for as long as he could to take in the sight of her. One hand released her flank to tangle in the blonde waves of her hair, fingers searching for purchase against the shape of her bones. With some clever movements he got to his feet and brought her with him, scooping her into his arms.

Sophia threw her two hands to her mouth as a giggle burst forth and Francis cradled her shaking body close as they laughed together, her forehead against his neck, his arms under her legs and back.

He lay her down on the bed so gently she thought for a moment that the mattress would not support her as he had, and that she might well slip away through the covers, dissolving through wood and feathers and floors to dissipate as a cloud of pure bliss.

By the end of the night she could not be sure that such a thing had not in fact occurred, as they lay together tangled in the covers of the dissected bed, the colours and textures pulled back and interwoven: red damask folded around brown quilt, pale skin pushed below rusty woollens to reveal crisp white cotton underlying all. Her hair, knotted and darkened, stuck to her creamy shoulders and to his flushed, freckled ones. He nuzzled his head against her collarbone and kissed the base of her throat.

“I cannot stay,” he told her, his regret pulling the words down into his chest, as though he fought to keep them unspoken.

To Sophia’s distress, Francis sat up and walked to the dressing table, returning with something in his hands. He sat at the head of the bed as she watched him uncomprehendingly, wishing he would simply return to her side so that they could sleep.

“You will remember me. I know it,” Francis bent over her and she took in the rumpled outline of his hair, the kindness of his eyes, and the dimples that made his sad smile into something she seemed to feel was echoed deep in her very being. He unfurled the locket that contained his own likeness, and laid it down against her hot skin.

She trembled expectantly, thinking that the silver would be cold, but it already matched her body temperature as it settled flatly on her breastbone. She raised her head to let him thread its chain around her neck, and he fumbled as he surely would with the clasp. “I would stay. But I must be gone, before daybreak.”

He bent to kiss her again, and she felt the heat from his body as he came close, tasted the special saltiness of both their sweat on his lips, and relaxed her head back into the pillows, even as she wanted, really, to raise her hands and catch hold of him, to draw him down, back to her, to keep him there forever, as he had promised: no more expeditions. No more distance and silence and not knowing.

But when she next fluttered her eyes open, she knew he was far from her. The fire had sunk low, a cool blue dawn framed the loose edges of her curtains, and her skin felt sticky with the residue of a fevered night.

Still the warmth in the pit of her abdomen flared brighter than the embers in the hearth, and Sophia smoothed her rumpled night dress back down over her exposed body, kicking her feet free from the tangle she had made of the bed clothes. She sat up and pressed her hand to her brow, but felt no sickness there. Her temples and the back of her neck were chill with sweat, but there was no sign of another in her room.

Sophia walked shakily to her dressing table, bereft at the wakening suspicion that the last night had been only a dream. She fumbled for the locket she had left by the mirror, her eyes stinging with tears, so that she could not see clearly. Swallowing a sob as her fingers knocked earrings and brooches aside, she finally swiped the excess water from her eyes and blinked, horrified to find the locket missing.

“No! No, no, no,” Sophia murmured, hands patting the surface of the table uselessly and opening and closing boxes until she finally looked up at her own reflection.

Blue eyes mirrored the morning light like sapphires, her blonde hair was a dark tangle, with her face flushed and her lips bitten red, she knew she looked like some heroine from the gothic novels. At her neck, sparking white with its perfect polish, her locket hung where another had clasped it in her dream.

Sophia raised a hand slowly to verify what the mirror seemed to tell her, and held the silver oval between her thumb and forefingers. She opened its clasp and stared at the reflection of Francis’s picture, astonished to recall all that she imagined had occurred between them during the previous night. She had no idea she could think up such things.

Slowly, she became aware of the sounds of Effie stomping up and down stairs, of the morning bustle of the house. Out on the street, people whose business could only begin at an early hour were already hurrying past on foot and by carriage. Softly, between the snorting of horses and the irritable shouts of drivers, the chords of a stringed instrument resonated in a disjointed manner.

Sophia walked to the window and plucked aside one heavy velvet curtain. The balladeer was back, tuning up his fiddle and his voice, singing snatches of songs and nonsense phrases. Sophia’s fist tightened on the heavy velvet of the curtain as she listened to his words rise up through the foggy morning air.

_They still kept hands and they embraced each other_   
_Until the long night was at an end_   
_Saying - Willie, Willie, where is your flushes?_   
_Where is your flushes you had years ago?_   
_Saying - Molly Ban, sure, cold clay has changed 'em_   
_The raging seas between me and you..._

“Miss Sophia! You’ll catch a chill, there by the window in nought but your nightie. What are you doing awake so early anyhow?”

Sophia spun to see Effie enter, one hand springing to cover the locket she wore and the other wrapping around her body protectively.

“I...I woke early from a dream.” She muttered, unable to hide a blush as she reached for the shawl that had been discarded on the floor, and moved to sit at the dressing table again, close to the fire as Effie stoked up its pink-hot embers.

Effie knew her role better than to ask impertinent questions, and simply observed Sophia from the corner of her eyes as she worked. She said nothing about the state of Miss Cracroft’s sweat-stiffened hair as she brushed and plaited it, nor did she remark upon the crumpled bed and the covers that spilled freely over its edges. By the time she was finished, Sophia left her room as poised and neat as ever, even if she seemed still to speak in a dazed and mesmerised tone.

Lady Jane eyed the silver locket her niece wore with disapproval. Sophia had not worn it publicly for some time, and Lady Jane thought she had promised to return it to its donor following his last proposal. But this morning Sophia’s eyes were pink like her nose, and she looked tired and bewildered in the harsh morning light. Lady Jane felt the Lord’s pity move her, and she found a way to suppress the question she wanted to ask. She missed her John so greatly, after all, that if Sophia felt even a fraction of her loss, even for the broken and desperate man Sir John had agreed to take as his second captain, then Lady Jane supposed her niece might be allowed some measure of sympathy.

“Well, Sophia. I have written a note to Mr Dickens this morning, and we will have our meeting about the next letter he is going to send to The Times. The snows are melting here, and so they must be melting in furthest Thule! We will renew our efforts. This is the year we will find them, I know it is.”

Sophia looked up at her, her mouth thin, her face drawn and angular with grief. But she nodded and then glanced down at her toast, which was well-covered with jam, but had not yet been touched by her.

“I had a thought, Aunt.”

“Yes dear?” Lady Jane put on her politest smile, wondering what this poor girl could think of offering now that they had not already tried.

“Well, it sounds foolish, perhaps.” Sophia abandoned the pretence that she was considering eating her toast and folded her hands on the table before her. She swallowed and surveyed Lady Jane’s expression, but decided to go on. “There has been a balladeer outside the house these last days. And even though I do not want to listen to his songs — I do not listen at all, or so I thought — I find that they...follow me. They burrow within me.”

Lady Jane’s eyebrows inched higher, making her eyes round, even as she thought her expression remained neutral and impassive. The lines around her mouth sharpened.

“We could commission a song. A broadside ballad, free to be sold cheaply to any who chooses to sing it. A song that tells the people how much we miss...we miss Sir John. Something that means they will not forget him, just as we do not forget.”

“A ballad?” Lady Jane repeated. This suggestion of Sophia’s was a revelation, and one she did not expect. “I do not understand.”

Sophia wrung her hands and nipped her lower lip. A flash of colour illuminated the v at the bottom of her throat and the high points of her cheekbones. “It seems to me that much of what that man sings is about dreams. What if...what if it was a song in which you dreamed of Sir John, and this was how you knew he still lived? After all, we may persuade more officers to captain ships in search of him, but each ship must be crewed also. A ballad is heard by all sorts of people. It is remembered, even by those who do not read the letters pages of The Times.”

Something about this conceit chimed with Lady Jane at last. “A dream, you say?” she mused. “Dreams can indeed tell us more of God’s plan than we are allowed to see with our waking eyes.” She considered it: men singing of her John as they hauled goods at the docks, men hearing the tune whistled by draymen going past. Girls brushing aside a tear as the song of her brave John rose above green London parks and reached the windows of the great and the good above, also.

“What an idea, Sophia! I must say, I do not know where you got such a singular thought. But I do believe there may be something in it. I shall ask the butler to go and talk to that man you have heard singing. We will find out who can write such things — maybe Mr Dickens will help! Oh, Sophia! Spring is here, and we are once more in action. This will be the year. I just know it.”

* * *

_It was homeward bound one night on the deep_   
_Swinging in my hammock I fell asleep_   
_I dreamed a dream and I thought it true_   
_Concerning Franklin and his gallant crew_

_With one hundred seamen he sailed away_   
_To the frozen ocean in the month of May_   
_To seek a passage around the pole_   
_Where we poor seamen do sometimes go_

_Through cruel hardships they mainly strove_   
_Their ship on mountains of ice was drove_   
_Only the Eskimo with his skin canoe_   
_Was the only one that ever came through_

_In Baffin's Bay where the whale fish blow_   
_The fate of Franklin no man may know_   
_The fate of Franklin no tongue can tell_   
_Lord Franklin along with his sailors do dwell_

_And now my burden it gives me pain_   
_For my long lost Franklin I'd cross the main_   
_Ten thousand pounds I would freely give_   
_To say on earth that my Franklin do live_

>  

**Author's Note:**

> There's a kind of folk song called the night-visiting song, and it's sometimes conflated with stories of ghostly lovers. A great modern example is 'Three Black Feathers' written by Bella Hardy: a woman is visited by her lover who has been missing/at war for years. She has a great night with him but then he vanishes in the morning, presumably to die. The one quoted in this fic is Sweet William's Ghost/Willie-O, which if you squint might just about be old enough to work in the setting.  
> The song at the end is Lord Franklin/Lady Franklin's Lament, a nineteenth century ballad that may well have been commissioned by Lady Jane. But I liked the idea of Sophia having some input.


End file.
